Shipping commodities up and down America’s inland waterway system got pretty hard to do in 2022, especially along the Mississippi River. Extended drought cut water levels to almost impassable levels and resulted in shipping grinding to a halt in the river. The good news is those levels are finally beginning to rebound.
Mike Steenhoek is the executive director of the Soy Transportation Coalition, a group that keeps a sharp eye on shipping and the waterways year-round. They’re happy to see those river levels starting to rise because ships are once again carrying commodities to southern ports in the U.S.
Mike Steenhoek of the Soy Transportation Coalition. (photo by the Iowa Soybean Association)
“Meaningful precipitation has occurred over the past several months,” he said from Ankeny, Iowa. “It’s made a significant impact throughout the entire inland waterway system.”
Steenhoek offered up Memphis, Tennessee, as an example, calling it one of the “ground-zero” locations for the low-water conditions last fall. That location is currently 10-10.5 feet of water depth in relation to the gauge.
“Last year at this time, we were at 19 feet,” he recalled. “So, we’re below last year. To give that some perspective, we were just about at a negative 11 feet in late October. We’re easily more than 20 feet better than we were in October, which is a significant increase making shipping easier.”
St. Louis, Missouri, was another example of “ground zero” in the low water level picture. That location is just a bit higher than at the same time in 2022, so the area has seen a nice rebound from the low levels. He says the moral of the story is the waterways have returned to a degree of “normalcy.” But there is a catch.
“It won’t take a lot of sustained dry conditions to tip us right back into lower conditions,” Steenhoek said. “It could critically impact some of those areas like St. Louis to Cairo, Illinois.”
Shipping commodities is getting back to near-normal levels, for now. The waterways need continued rainfall in case dry weather returns. (Photo by AgFax)
Cairo (pronounced KAY-row) is a significant point in the waterway system. That’s where the Ohio River meets the Mississippi and provides a big influx of water into the system so that St. Louis to Cairo area can be very susceptible to low water conditions.
How dry did some of those areas get? The levels sank so low that ships were actually running aground and getting stuck in the Mississippi River. When that happens, one of two things usually occurs.
“Those ships sometimes had to get dug out,” he recalled. “Sometimes, they had to sit there until water levels rose to the point they could move again.
We also had sediment buildup, or ‘shoaling,’ in multiple locations,” Steenhoek said. “That resulted in shipping having to stop or significantly slow down. That meant there was a lot of dredging activity occurring last year and continuing into 2023.”
The timing for ships getting stuck last fall was awful, as that’s a time when a high percentage of U.S. exports occurs between September and February. “That’s when the U.S. soybean spigot is turned on and we supply a lot of soybeans to the world market,” he said. “Bad time for one of the main ways we move product to our ports to go down.”
Steenhoek monitors shipping in the waterways closely and says there is good movement up and down the waterways right now. U.S. export volumes are comparable to even a little higher than where they were last year.
“That’s really good news,” he said. “The reports I’m getting, particularly from the export facilities down in the New Orleans area, say they are back to a healthy degree of normalcy.
“As I mentioned, we’d love to see steady precipitation continue,” Steenhoek added. “We don’t have a lot of excess water in the tank to rely on if things go that dry again.”
Commodities and sports typically don’t go together most years. However, this fall, the two topics have come together in an interesting way.
Being a long-time sports broadcaster, I’ve noticed that when the major sports seasons wrap up, certain sports media love to immediately do what they call a “way-too-early” look to the next season. Evidently, it’s not just a sports thing.
I know harvest is just ramping up in many areas as I write this, but Farm Futures took what some might think is a “way-too-early” survey of planting intentions for 2023, and I couldn’t pass it up. It looks like corn will be king once again next spring among all commodities.
Corn looks to be king when it comes to 2023 spring planting (photo from agriculture.com)
Jacqueline Holland is the grain market analyst for Farm Futures, and she wrote an article about the survey. She says the way-too-soon survey results are favoring corn for spring planting despite some challenges that come with the commodity.
“Even with higher fertilizer prices, farmers are still prepared to go all-in on corn,” she said. “Our survey found that farmers expect to plant 94.3 million acres of corn, a five percent increase from USDA’s current acreage estimates.”
If that prediction is realized, it would be the most corn planted in the U.S. since 95.4 million acres went into the ground in 2013. While soybean acres will be behind corn next year, U.S. growers are still sowing a lot of beans during spring planting in 2023.
“We expect farmers to plant 87.3 million acres of beans,” Holland said. “That’s almost a one percent decrease from this year’s acreage.” Cotton is one of the reasons that soybean acreage is going to drop a little. In the Mississippi Delta, a lot of acres in that region are going to provide “stiff competition” for soybeans during spring planting.
They also expect wheat acres to rise in 2023 thanks to more winter wheat acres in the Eastern Corn Belt. Farm Futures expects growers to plant 36.6 million acres of winter wheat. With more winter wheat acres going in the ground, spring wheat acres will back up from this year, with the 2023 estimate at 12.3 million acres.
“That means a grand total of 48.9 million acres of wheat will be planted in 2023,” she said.
Holland admits she was a little surprised at the survey results. She says there was a lot of price responsiveness to the rapidly-rising fertilizer prices heading into spring planting this year.
“When farmers were making their planting decisions in December last year, soybean prices were rallying strongly,” Holland recalled. “But with all of the issues we’ve seen with the flow of corn in the Black Sea this year, as well as the U.S. corn crop struggling with drought, corn has some bullish prospects for next year.”
She says if we do see a larger corn acreage next year, that might lead to some expansion back in the cattle market. In turn, that would likely revive some corn acreage in the Plains. Remember, about three million acres of corn went into prevent plant in the spring of this year.
A Farm Futures Survey shows we might be harvesting a lot of corn again come fall of 2023. (Photo from kansasfarmfoodconnection)
“A lot of those acres were in the Dakotas and Minnesota,” she said. “Barring another bad weather event next year, I expect those acres to go back into corn in 2023.”
Farm Futures also has other questions in their survey beyond commodities and planting intentions. Those questions include where farmers are headed with input costs next year. Based on the survey responses, Holland says profit margins are going to shrink next year. The question is, how much?
“As of right now, it doesn’t look like growers are going to skimp on any fertilizer applications,” Holland said. “Most responses show farmers are ready to lock in their fertilizers at the lowest prices they can get. That will hopefully keep at least some liquidity in these crop budgets.
“We’ll see how these things ultimately shake out for planting and commodities,” she added. “There’s a long time between now and next spring.”
Market Prices are still higher, but for how long? Commodity markets are rarely dull and sometimes are outright wild. One-quarter of the way into 2022, and we’ve seen a lot of upward pressure in several commodities. The curious question is how long is this going to last given multiple outside factors that could bring the higher push to a halt.
Mike Zuzolo is the founder and president of Global Commodity Analytics in Atchison, Kansas. He’s been working in the markets in various positions since November 1995. Zuzolo has seen a lot of ups and downs over the years, and the corn market has been near all-time highs for quite a while.
Mike Zuzolo of Global Commodity Analytics in Atchison, Kansas (Photo from Facebook.com)
“We’ve been within reach of the all-time high for corn set in August 2012, at $8.43 3/4,” he said on the phone from Kansas. “You have the Hard Red Wheat drought, you have the E15 blend increase this summer, planting delays that are pressuring a marketplace that’s expecting more acres than what the USDA predicted earlier this year.
“And then you have the soybeans getting support from the vegetable oil market, which is supported by the crude oil market, and that is supported by the biggest feature of all, the war in Ukraine,” Zuzolo added.
Over the past four months, Zuzolo said there are two overarching factors that had the most influence on the corn market prices. One is the idea from the Federal Reserve that the U.S. had transitory inflation. At roughly the same time the Fed began to publicly acknowledge that wasn’t the case, Russia began its attack on Ukraine. He said most people didn’t seem to truly expect that would happen.
He calls these two events “black rhinos.” Those are events the public knew were possible but kind of turned away from, not thinking they would actually happen. “They aren’t like black swans that we didn’t know where out there,” he said. “You didn’t think they would have the impact on the markets that’s happened so far.”
The market prices could potentially feel the impacts of the war in Ukraine for years. Zuzolo, a long-time market observer, says the length of the impact may depend on who “wins” the war and how big it may get before it’s done.
The commodity markets may feel the impact of the war in Ukraine for years to come. (Photo from Hindustantimes.com)
“Does NATO get involved?” he wondered, “It would then go from two countries directly involved with a lot of support from multiple other countries, or does it expand into a NATO and China and Syria and Iran conflict. The regional conflict would have a great chance of blossoming into more of a full-on world war.”
He thinks the trade is beginning to take the potential conflict escalation into account, “and they should.” A recent weekly stocks report of distillate fuels in the U.S., which is mainly heating oil and diesel fuel, showed America’s distillate fuels at their lowest point since 2008.
“All of the sudden, we have a situation where the wheat market is contending with a situation similar to 2008 in terms of drought potential, knocking down yields,” he said. “Now, we have the energy sector also looking like 2008. If you throw the Russia/Ukraine issue on top of that, then yes, you could have something that lasts for quite some time.”
There are a lot of negative features out there that can affect market prices. He said the trade can’t get a handle on what the supply is right now. Folks in the markets don’t know if the demand is being rationed aggressively enough at this point, because they don’t know if the supply has stopped going down yet.
High Path Avian Influenza continues to lower the available supply of poultry. (Photo from newsweek.com)
“The Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza is in 20-something states right now,” Zuzolo said, “we have a hog herd that is shrinking as of the March Hogs and Pigs Report, and we have a cattle herd that is seeing an almost-weekly drop of one-to-three pounds on a dressed basis. I think we’re only four or five pounds above where we were a year ago, and this is in the beginning of what could be one of the worst droughts in cattle country.”
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) recently cut world GDP by almost a full percentage point just since January. While the IMF puts a lot of it at the foot of the war in Ukraine, Zuzolo says it goes back to the supply chain issues. The U.S. couldn’t afford any more problems on the supply side with energy and crude oil than what the country already faced because of COVID-19.
Thinking long term, Zuzolo spoke to the possibility of the U.S. having to ration exports in order to make sure the U.S. had enough food to feed the country. He doesn’t think it will happen in terms of food exports, but it could happen in other sectors.
“In terms of crude oil, we recently lost a lot more barrels of oil than the trade expected,” Zuzolo said. “It wasn’t because of extra strong demand, it was three times more than the trade expected because we were exporting it out the door. If we can’t bring up the rig count here in the United States and start producing more to meet international and domestic demand, it will then be time to start thinking about rationing.”
Zuzolo said this will have to be a topic of conversation three-to-six months down the line if the war expands and the conflict gets any bigger than it already is. In the meantime, it’s harder than ever to guess what’s ahead in 2022 for the markets.
“I’m gonna stick with what I’ve said recently,” he said. “Because this is a supply cost-push, weather-induced, inflationary move, I still feel the first half of calendar year 2022 is the best time for grain hedgers to get their hedges in place, and yes, I do think they’ll need them. It’s because of the fact that it’s not demand led, and that we are on track for a recession, a greater than 50 percent chance, by the fourth quarter of this year.”
Commodity markets are never dull, are they? (Photo from wikipedia.com)
He says it’s important to get grain hedges in place by the end of June. For the livestock and poultry producer, the second half of 2022 is going to give them a better opportunity to hedge better profit.
“At that point, not only will high market price prices for grains pull down the weights, the HPAI will pull down supply, as will some natural herd reductions. That will all begin to be felt in the market price and the available supplies of market-ready cattle and hogs by the time we get to August and September.
“I still want to hedge the livestock markets, but I don’t think we’re on as big of a timeline as I am on the grains during the first half of the year,” he added.
Port slowdowns are still clogging up the nation’s supply chains, and it’s a big problem to solve. Ray Bowman is Director of the Small Business Development Center of Santa Barbara and Ventura counties in Southern California. He’s also the program chair for the District Export Council of Southern California. The business veteran and trade consultant said things have improved a bit but only on one side of the import-export equation.
America’s port slowdowns are showing minimal signs of improvement but only on the export side. (Photo from splash247.com)
“Many things are going on to help with the port slowdowns,” he said on the phone from his office in Camarillo, California. “Most of us have seen the news footage of ships backed up and waiting to unload their cargo. A big part of the backup is the unprecedented buying demand we saw during COVID-19.”
He says the Biden administration moved to get the nation’s ports operating on a 24-hour basis or, at least, get that framework in place to help relieve congestion. Bowman says it’s helped somewhat on the import side of the business, where he says things are about 30 percent better than before.
“Unfortunately, I don’t see that it’s improved on the export side,” Bowman says. “So that’s been tough on American shippers who need to move their goods overseas.
“We knew there would be a significant increase in buying during COVID-19,” he said. “Up until recently, we haven’t seen much of a slowdown in purchasing. Companies are likely still trying to fill orders backlogged for months.”
Ray Bowman is an international trade consultant from southern California with over 30 years of experience. (Photo from edcollaborative.com)
With so much demand for containers on the import side, it’s very difficult for shippers to simply find export containers to load their goods in. Companies started focusing more and more on the import side because they were making so much more money.
When it comes to export containers, fewer goods are leaving the country, so it tends to be cheaper to purchase export containers. They aren’t worth as much to the steamship lines as the larger volume of goods coming into the country. “Because of the demand for imports, steamship companies put all their space availability on the import side,” he said. “They didn’t pay as much attention to the export side, making containers much harder to find.
“The price of those containers is another limiting factor,” Bowman said. “As demand increased, the price shot higher at an unprecedented rate. We knew the price would increase because those costs have gotten suppressed in recent years, but we didn’t expect it to climb by ridiculously huge amounts.”
Limited amounts of containers and exorbitantly high prices hit the small and medium-sized companies harder than the larger businesses. He said the larger companies have economies of scale built into their business structures. Many typically have contracts for consistent shipping availability and trucking services regularly available.
“Small and medium companies buy their services primarily off the spot market,” Bowman said. “So, those higher prices hit those companies even harder than their larger competitors. These things like container shortages haven’t come out of the blue. This has been going on for some time, but when buying spikes as we’ve seen recently, there’s a point at which a system can’t efficiently handle the excess demand. That’s when we get significant port slowdowns.”
Port slowdowns are still ongoing as shippers try to process orders for goods made up to 90 days ago, so it will take some time to work through the backlog. (Photo from theguardian.com)
In addition to the small pool of available containers, Bowman said warehousing space for unloaded goods is almost maxed out. American warehousing only has roughly three percent of its total space available, which is not a good thing. He says the West Coast ports have less than two percent of space available.
“That only makes the container shortage worse because you have to be able to empty containers to make them available,” he said.
Many truckers who deliver to ports run into something called a “dual transaction” requirement. Bowman said that means if a trucker has a container to drop off, they’d better have another one to pick up. If a driver has a container to pick up, they’d better have another one to drop off. It’s efficient on paper, but if a driver doesn’t have that second part of the dual transaction, they’ll have to go find one.
“Another big challenge at the ports is something called the ‘Box Rule,’” he said. “When a trucker drops off a container to a particular shipping company, you have to have a chassis. Those are the wheels on the bottom that you load the container on.
“These steamship companies have contracts with different chassis makers,” Bowman said. “A steamship line will say, ‘if you’re going to tender one of our containers, you also have the chassis of the company we’ve contracted with.’ If you don’t have the right chassis to go with the right container, you’ll find yourself with cargo, the booking, and nowhere to unload it.”
Bowman, a business veteran with over 30 years of experience, says there is a lot of conversation about not having a Box Rule at the country’s ports. Shippers don’t want to worry about where the chassis comes from. Instead, they want the companies to bill whoever needs to get billed to use a chassis.
The Box Rule is a big problem in the nation’s ports. (photo from joc.com)
“Because of rules like this, roughly 30 percent of truck drivers miss their appointments,” Bowman said. “if you aren’t there on time for whatever reason, such as looking for a chassis, there’s no recourse. You’ve missed your appointment. It’s not unusual, at all, for a trucker to get there hours early and miss their appointment because they’re stuck in a queue.”
Another big reason that things get bogged down is a backlog. A lot of the shipments coming in right now got booked 90 days ago, if not longer.
While shippers, port officials, and government officials are looking at how to rectify these different challenges, Bowman says one of the biggest challenges is a lack of adequate infrastructure at the ports. Most of America’s ports were built when ships were typically much smaller than they are today.
“When I started in the shipping industry, a large ship was around a 4,000-container capacity,” he recalled. “In the 1980s, that was a big ship. Now, we have ships that can hold between 10,000 and 20,000 containers.
“Not only are they bigger, but these ships also just aren’t one carrier like they used to be,” Bowman added. “It used to be one carrier, one ship. You now have what are called ‘Shipping Alliances.’ In fact, there are three big ones in the U.S. As many as four or more steamship lines can be sharing space on one ship.”
Bowman said one of his biggest personal concerns is agricultural goods. If a shipment of consumer electronics takes a long time to get where it needs to go, the products aren’t in any danger of spoiling. Agricultural shipments contain perishable products that won’t wait long for a container and ship.
“A lot of attention needs to get paid to that,” he said. “Those are some of our best exports, and we need to protect that part of the supply chain.”
Bowman is an internationally-respected business consultant who says he’s never seen anything like this before. “There have been port slowdowns in the past, but this is truly unprecedented,” he said.
U.S. Dairy Export President and CEO Tom Vilsack spoke at the #NAFB19 convention in Kansas City, appearing more optimistic about the future of the U.S. dairy industry than in recent years. (Photo by Chad Smith)
Dairy industry officials know firsthand that the industry has struggled in recent years, and there’s no question about it. Former Ag Secretary Tom Vilsack, who spoke to broadcasters during the National Association of Farm Broadcasting’s annual convention in Kansas City. Vilsack, is the current President and CEO of the U.S. Dairy Export Council. He says in spite of some tough years for the American dairy industry, there are reasons for optimism.
News broke this week that Dean Foods, America’s largest milk producing company in the dairy industry, filed for bankruptcy. I had a chance for some one-on-one comments with the former Ag Secretary, who preferred to talk more about the positive signs ahead in the dairy industry than the bad news about Dean Foods.
He took a lot of questions from farm broadcasters on a variety of topics in the dairy industry. One of the biggest topics in recent months is the growing market for plant-based “milks.” He and the rest of the dairy industry aren’t happy with these companies referring to themselves as “milk.” The question came from Orien Samuelson, the dean of farm broadcasters and a good friend of Vilsack.
He says the US-Mexico-Canada Trade Agreement making its way through the House of Representatives, all be it slowly because of Democratic concerns, is another reason to be optimistic. He’s confident that the agreement will get done.
It’s hard to believe that folks in Washington, D.C. are already talking about the next Farm Bill. The reason for that is House Ag Committee Chair Collin Peterson, a Minnesota Democrat, isn’t sure yet if he’ll be running for re-election in 2020. He’s said publicly that decision will be coming in either January or February. Vilsack said even if Peterson doesn’t run again, the next farm bill will get done.
Lastly, as President of the Dairy Export Council, he pays close attention to the country’s export situation, which hasn’t been great at all thanks to trade disputes. In spite of that, with agreements pending in Japan, as well as in North America, exports are another reason to be optimistic.
Here’s the podcast with Jeremy Miller. If you want to download it for later, go ahead and click on the three dots on the right side of the player and hit download.
Agricultural Trade is a sore topic of conversation these days. The agricultural sector in Minnesota and around the country has been struggling for more than a year due in large part to trade disputes with other nations, including the biggest one with China. However, there is some good news out there in international market opportunities for Minnesota farmers. District 28 Republican Senator Jeremy Miller recently took part in an overseas trade mission to Taiwan July 21-26 and says there are opportunities out there for Minnesota farmers to find markets for their commodities.
Minnesota State Senator Jeremy Miller of District 28 got to see firsthand that there are still agricultural trade opportunities overseas for Minnesota farmers, thanks to a recent trade mission to Taiwan. (Contributed photo)
“A representative from the Taipei Economic and Cultural
Office in Chicago reached out to me earlier this year about leading a
multi-state, bipartisan legislative leaders’ delegation to Taiwan,” he
recalled. “Before we go any further, people have asked who paid for the trip. I
want to make it clear that the trip was paid for by Taiwan’s Ministry of
Foreign Affairs. The whole purpose of the trip was to develop relationships
between the United States of America, specifically Minnesota, and partners in
Taiwan.”
It was the second trip Miller has taken overseas, with the
first one taking place in South Korea back in 2011. He said the number one
focus of these trips is to “meet people,” with the number two focus of “looking
at opportunities.” The third and most important focus of the trip is
“developing relationships” to see what kinds of business dealings can evolve in
the future.
“The potential is there for a lot of different relationships between Minnesota and Taiwan,” he said. “By far, the biggest opportunity I see in Taiwan is for agricultural trade. Minnesota already exports a good number of crops, especially soybeans, to Taiwan. I think there’s even more opportunity there, whether it be for corn, more soybeans, and especially for pork.”
Miller looked into the numbers and found that Minnesota exported about $413 million worth of goods to Taiwan in 2018. However, that number is likely to go higher. “Last year, there was a agricultural trade mission to Taiwan that both Minnesota and Iowa took part in,” he recalled. “On that trip, Taiwan signed a $1.5 billion-dollar deal to buy 3.9 million metric tons of soybeans from both Minnesota and Iowa before 2021.
“What I’m driving at is there are even more opportunities
for Minnesota and Taiwan to increase the amount of business done,” Miller said.
“But, it comes down to keep lines of communication open and building on those
relationships once they’re established.”
It’s well-known that the trade dispute between the United States and China has hit the U.S. soybean industry hard. China, once the biggest buyer of U.S. soybeans, is no longer purchasing large volumes of beans. That means a lot of the product needs to find new markets. The U.S. Soybean Export Council is working on a new initiative called “What It Takes,” which is designed to help deal with the backlog of soybeans that need to be shipped and sold.
The US Soybean Export Council has developed a new initiative called “What It Takes.” CEO Jim Sutter says the initiative is designed to help get some of the backlog of U.S. soybeans into other markets than China, which is in a trade dispute with the U.S. (photo from youtube.com)
“When the tariff dispute cranked up in April, we were all hopeful that it would be a short-term thing,” said USSEC CEO Jim Sutter. “While it could change at any time, we’d better plan for it to be a longer-term ordeal. It’s made even more challenging by the complex issues between the two countries. There’s more than soybeans involved, with a lot at stake.”
“It was a huge shock to what our industry has gotten used to in terms of marketing plans,” Sutter said. “Our team has been very busy working with exporters. We’re trying to help them in any market where they might have potential customers. We’re also working with importers around the world, telling them about the attributes and possibilities that U.S. soy holds for them.”
Sutter said most overseas markets have purchased at least some U.S. soybeans. There are just a few that haven’t yet. U.S. beans are priced very competitively around the world right now, making them a more affordable option than in past years.
Soybeans have really backed up in the Pacific Northwest. Exporters there typically sell most of their beans to China. USSEC is focusing on encouraging potential customers to come to the PNW as they look for soybeans, and they’ve been successful at it. Taiwan has purchased soybeans in the Pacific Northwest for the first time in 15 years.
“We’re doing a lot of work in other Asian countries, which we think would be a logical destination for those beans from the Pacific Northwest.”
Here’s the complete conversation:
Here’s a refresher on just how USSEC helps improve things for soybean farmers:
